Franklin review: Michael Douglas is transfixing as the titular founding father

You may be forgiven for thinking, as we did, that it was wildly flattering of the folks behind the new Apple TV+ series Franklin (which premieres April 12) to cast Michael Douglas as that titular founding father. Even at 79, the Wall Street and Fatal Attraction actor is as dashing and charming a screen presence as ever. Which speaks, we guess, to the way this limited series wants to portray the man who’d become the oldest participant in the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and who, for the bulk of Franklin, spends his time cajoling the French ruling class into supporting and abetting the budding nation the United States would become. The casting is a fitting gamble for this surprisingly spry and prickly historical drama that shuttles sometimes nicely and sometimes awkwardly between backstabbing backdoor diplomacy and sultry courtly intrigues.

Based on Stacy Schiff’s 2005 book A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, And The Birth Of America, Franklin begins when the famed printer and intellectual arrives at the shores of France with his grandson (Noah Jupe’s William Temple) in tow. He has one goal: to secure financial and diplomatic support from the French so as to fund and embolden the fight across the pond against the British crown. It’s a rather tall order, especially since the King may not be seeing eye to eye with his foreign minister, Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes (Thibault de Montalembert), and maybe not even with some prominent members of court who see fit to help those tax-averse rascals give it to the British. Throughout his stay, then, he must woo several at times competing factions at once, making the best use of his wit and charm to improve the revolutionary’s standing in France at a time when the crown may fear what may happen if a monarchy is toppled from afar.

Wrapped up in this quite complicated, almost spy-like diplomatic thriller where it’s never clear who Franklin can trust or depend on is also the story of Franklin’s relationship with his grandson. Temple arrives in France wide-eyed, excited by the prospect of helping his grandfather in this most wily of missions. But soon enough, as he immerses himself within the French court (yes, donning their wigs, their attire, and even their arrogant air), he begins to clash with his grandfather. At times, Franklin is most thrilling as a coming-of-age tale, with Jupe handily stepping into the role of Temple, who comes into his own, makes friends with the Marquis de Lafayette, and then becomes a hero at Brandywine and woos French girls who giggle their way into his heart.

He takes from his grandfather, too, whose affairs with women during his Paris years balance out the more arcane conflicts and petty rivalries that characterize much of Franklin’s politicking life. And it’s there where Franklin, mostly due to the presence of Ludivine Sagnier (as Anne Louise Brillon de Jouy) and Jeanne Balibar (as Anne-Catherine de Ligniville, Madame Helvétius) distinguishes itself from the otherwise dry history lesson it is telling quite well. Douglas, who’s long excelled at playing characters who flirt with danger in ways both literal and figurative, is infinitely watchable as he woos the former and is wooed by the latter. Sagnier, in particular, playing a wife who must live with the indignity of being married to a flagrant philanderer and who finds in Franklin a sliver of excitement, both physical and intellectual, is a dream to watch on screen—yes, even with the ridiculous wigs and heavy makeup that this period demanded of its French gentry.

Franklin doesn’t shy away from painstakingly outlining the complexity of the founding father’s daunting task during his near-decade stay in France. There are too many betrayals to keep track of and too many two-faced promises made (and later broken)—between the colonists and the British, between Franklin and his French allies, and between the French crown and its ministers. In any given episode, you’re called to wonder whether any of its characters, which include Gravier, Monsieur Brillon (Marc Duret), John Adams (Eddie Marsan), Edward Bancroft (Daniel Mays), and even the Marquis de Lafayette (Théodore Pellerin), are operating in good faith or, as is more often the case, in brazenly self-serving ways. Here is a bleak if perhaps all too accurate portrait of politics—revolutionary politics, specifically—as depressingly dependent on the whims of trifling individuals, be they kings or merely kingmakers.

Basically, to watch Franklin is to get a surprisingly nuanced portrait of the warring factions at the time, a reminder that not all revolutionary battles are fought on the field but also in drawing rooms, between folks who seduce one another just enough to get what they need from the other. This is, in a way, the story of the American Revolution told from afar, from the seemingly comforting spaces Franklin infiltrated in Europe with his charm and his wit. And it’s a testament to how the limited series is constructed that it never feels like a boring history lesson. Whether singling out characters like the gender-bending Chevalier d’Éon, taking us to the theater, regaling us with armonica and piano recitals, or indulging us in Temple’s first blushes of love (and lust), Franklin takes enough narrative detours to more robustly tell this quintessentially American tale.

Franklin premieres April 12 on Apple TV+